


Sentinel

by nip-the-cat (venom_for_free), thechaoscryptid



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bodyguard, Alternate universe - Mafia, Developing Relationship, Implied/Referenced Violence, M/M, Mutual Pining, Otabek and Nikolai bonding hours, Plot? Idk her, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, annoyances to lovers speedrun, but like...barely mentioned
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:47:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27434545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venom_for_free/pseuds/nip-the-cat, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thechaoscryptid/pseuds/thechaoscryptid
Summary: “You are prepared, aren’t you? You seem tense, and I’d really prefer not to die today.”“Just today specifically?” Otabek says, staring dead ahead as Yuri’s face colors. “Tomorrow could be arranged.”“You’re bold,” Yuri shoots back. To his credit, his recovery time is spectacular, and he looks Otabek up and down once before turning to walk up the stairs. When he reaches the top, he pauses. “I’d like to see you try,” he says, voice ringing like a bell through the foyer. “I didn’t ask for protection because I’m worried--you’re here to be my complement, not to watch me like some guardian angel.”“Oh, I’m a far cry from angelic.”
Relationships: Otabek Altin/Yuri Plisetsky
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23
Collections: Superfan





	Sentinel

**Author's Note:**

> Part of venom-for-free's Superfan collab project ❤ The mafia part is like...reeeeally in the background, and the fun relationship stuff comes in chapter two ("the horny potential of tattoos" is one sentence in my doc lol)

Yuri Plisetsky carries the sun with him. It’s made itself at home in his hair, shining gold under the lights of Lilia’s office as he leans back in the chair next to her desk. His arms cross as a sneer falls across his face, pointed questions about Otabek dripping derisively from his lips until Lilia gives him a look.

“Be grateful we’re not assigning you Georgi,” she says. 

“The horror,” Yuri retorts, and Otabek simply stands mute as he glares. His anger wraps around him like armor, thick and heavy as the snows that blanket the city outside. It shines brightly as well, an almost palpable force as Yuri’s walls fortify. 

Otabek knows this sort of anger, and he knows this sort of person. He’s seen the anger before, in people so bogged down by their ghosts that their own happiness comes later, and he’s seen the sort of person Yuri’s made himself again and again during the war. The steely glint in his eyes is a damn good mask for any lingering anxieties, but there’s a slight tremor in the mafioso’s fingers that betrays the facade.

Yuri is, perhaps, not as strong as he likes to think he is.

“What?” he snips.

“You’ve got soldier eyes,” Otabek says, the first words he’s spoken since being all but pinned to the wall by the younger man’s glare.

“You’re shitting me.”

“It’s not my job to joke,” Otabek says, and Yuri doubles down on the ire as he, Otabek, and Lilia buckle down to discuss the particulars of the next few months. She was right to call on Otabek--protecting a mafioso is hard on the best of days, and Otabek can already tell any time he spends with Yuri will be exceedingly difficult. There’s a pit in his stomach filled with the creeping beginnings of dread; he’s unsure whether it’s because of the iciness radiating through the room or the fact that whatever he’s wearing reminds Otabek of better times with people long gone.

He hasn’t asked about the why--that’s not his job either, and he’s sure proximity and time will have Yuri telling him later anyway--but that doesn’t stop his mind from wandering as they finalize arrangements. Nervous after the person everyone’s calling the Butcher took down Yakov, perhaps? Doesn’t wish to meet the same fate? Lord knows he’s probably managed to piss off the right (or wrong) people simply by being himself.

He wonders still as Yuri’s heat remains plastered to his back as they race through the streets of St. Petersburg to the location Yuri’s chosen to hole up in. Its opulence is a far cry from Otabek’s own box of an apartment: lofty ceilings, wide windows covered by deep burgundy curtains, and woodwork that puts Otabek’s attempts at whittling to shame.

There are worse places he could be spending the next several months, he supposes.

“You can room wherever you want, I don’t care,” Yuri says dismissively, brushing off Otabek’s concerns about the state of the first floor--too many open areas for his taste. He picks up a tan cat that’s winding around his ankles and coos at it, asks if she had a nice trip over. “Potya,” he says when Otabek inquires. “A far better companion than any human. Don’t worry, I promise she’s not going to try and poison me.”

“Hilarious.”

“I like to think so.” The corner of Yuri’s lips twitches up in a fleeting smile, and the pit in Otabek’s stomach cracks wider as the other man walks to look at him eye-to-eye. “You  _ are  _ prepared, aren’t you? You seem tense, and I’d really prefer not to die today.”

“Just today specifically?” Otabek says, staring dead ahead as Yuri’s face colors. “Tomorrow could be arranged.”

“You’re bold,” Yuri shoots back. To his credit, his recovery time is spectacular, and he looks Otabek up and down once before turning to walk up the stairs. When he reaches the top, he pauses. “I’d like to see you try,” he says, voice ringing like a bell through the foyer. “I didn’t ask for protection because I’m worried--you’re here to be my complement, not to watch me like some guardian angel.”

“Oh, I’m a far cry from angelic,” Otabek says. Angels don’t spend their lives looking over their shoulders, waiting for the hammer to fall. Their implements of destruction aren’t the pistols and knives Otabek keeps on him at all times. They don’t  _ fail. _

No… He’s certainly no demon, but he’s a far cry from heavenly.

“I’ll be sleeping,” Yuri says. “Don’t disturb me. Make yourself comfortable.” 

“Mm.” Otabek nods and Yuri strides out of sight, and the sound of his door slamming only makes Otabek wonder exactly how he’s going to pin down Russia’s iciest star.

**

Otabek learns quickly that  _ frustration  _ is just as good a title as  _ ice prince.  _ He’s not sure where along the line he fucked up enough to be tasked with caging a wild cat--and it’s  _ not  _ Potya, she’s taken to him like a duck to water--but soldier eyes don’t equate to a soldier’s discipline, a soldier’s caution.

Yuri spends most of their early days together holed up in his room, emerging only to drag the occasional plate of Otabek’s cooking back to hiding. Three days in, Lilia shows up with Yuri’s grandfather, Nikolai. 

“Don’t worry,” Yuri tells Otabek. “I’ll pay double for his protection. Triple, if you want it.”

“It’s not about the money,” Otabek snaps, “it’s about being told what I’m working with. I can’t properly do my job if things like this are sprung on me.”

“Yura,” Nikolai admonishes. “You know better.”

Otabek watches as Yuri’s mouth drops, something warring in his eyes before he snaps his jaw shut and looks at the floor. “I’m sorry,” he says, the shock of it nearly stopping Otabek’s heart. “Triple, and he takes precedence.”

Nikolai pats Yuri’s hair fondly while shaking his head. “I’m an old man, boy. I could do much worse than dying for my heart.”

“Grandpa,” Yuri sighs.

“Besides,” Nikolai continues over him. “I’ve lived most of my life already.” He looks at Otabek over Yuri’s head, and Otabek sees  _ exactly  _ where the steel in Yuri’s eyes comes from. “Don’t listen to him. I’m not an invalid yet. I may not know the details, but I trust Yura, and therefore trust you to do the right thing, Otabek, was it?”

Otabek nods once.

There’s some intangible warmth behind Yuri’s gaze when he stares at his grandfather, something Otabek hasn’t seen before, and it bleeds between the three of them before Yuri reins it in. “We’ll talk about it later,” he says shortly. “For now, come with me. We’ll get you set up in your rooms and show you around, okay?”

“Yes, yes,” Nikolai says, and as the two walk away, Otabek watches them with questions weighing on his mind and dread hanging over his heart.

**

“I’m going out,” Yuri announces one day, about two weeks into their hiding.

“Not without me, you’re not,” Otabek says.

Yuri scoffs, flips open his sweatshirt, and gives Otabek an eyeful of the pistols he’s packing. “Think again.”

“I’ve thought plenty,” Otabek says. He’d be lying if he said it’s an unselfish desire--he’s beginning to feel just as caged as Yuri, and he longs for something other than listening to Potya gambol about upstairs. He’s not going to  _ say  _ it, though, so instead he pokes at the elephant in the room. “You should’ve thought twice about whatever it is you did, the consequences.”

And oh, Yuri’s face twists hard at that, angry armor slamming back into place as he whirls on his heel and looks back. “Remind me again why you were available for this job?”

Otabek opens his mouth to snap back, but Yuri interrupts him, waving a hand.

“Right, because you couldn’t handle being in the service anymore. Baghdad, was it? Maybe  _ you  _ should have thought twice about the consequences.”

Ice pours down Otabek’s spine, rage and grief rocketing through every part of him as his hands begin to shake where they’re stuffed in his pockets. “Say it again,” he says, voice carefully neutral even as he shifts forward into an almost predatory stance.

“Touched a nerve, did I?”

_ As if  _ a  _ nerve is all,  _ Otabek thinks. He digs his nails into his thigh to drag his focus away from the unwanted memory of blood on his hands, delicately fluttering heartbeats that petered to nothing all because he wasn’t  _ good  _ enough.

When he looks up, Yuri’s brow is furrowed, and he’s not sure if it’s confusion or concern.

Probably confusion.

Yuri doesn’t give two shits about dead friends and broken minds.

“I said,  _ say it again,”  _ Otabek says lowly.

“Otabek--”

Otabek stalks forward until he’s leaning over Yuri, one hand squeezing his shoulder harder than he really should be. He leans down to whisper in his ear. “I’m not one of your dogs to order around,” he says. “I couldn’t care less about how powerful you were--you will  _ not  _ test me like that.”

“I’m not testing,” Yuri breathes, and when a shiver runs through him, Otabek tells himself it’s because he’s scared. 

“Do you just pick at people for fun, then?”

It’s two seconds too long for Otabek’s taste before Yuri shakes his head.

Releasing him, Otabek takes a step back and inhales deeply, then exhales to a count of eight. He shuts his eyes and when he opens them again, Yuri’s face is shuttered. “Where were you thinking of going?” he asks.

“Nowhere.”

“Bullshit.”

Yuri sighs and scrubs a hand over his face with an irritated groan. “Should’ve just let them take me immediately,” he mutters, and then, louder, says, “Shelter.”

It’s so unexpected that Otabek takes another step back, cocking his head. “What?”

“Potya’s been lonely ever since my other cat passed,” Yuri says. He crosses his arms and looks down to the side, a flush riding high on his sharp cheekbones. “I--look, they only know me as the guy who comes in every so often to donate shit. It’s not dangerous.”

“O...kay,” Otabek says slowly. And then, “What are you, afraid a kitten will attack me?”

“It’s private,” Yuri snips.

“You gave up that sort of privacy when you hired me. I’m at least coming with to the building,” Otabek says. “Besides, it could do us both good to get out.”

Yuri looks him up and down once, twice before nodding once. “If you insist.”

“I do,” Otabek says, and Yuri’s jaw clenches.

“Fine,” Yuri says, then they’re off, and when they arrive back, Nikolai’s delighted to meet the sleek black kitten Yuri’s dubbed Jinx. She proceeds to live up to her name, constantly underfoot and causing chaos as everyone begins to settle into their routines. 

Otabek wakes up at 5 sharp every morning, centers himself with the heavy thud of his fist against the punching bag Yuri supplied him with--

( _ Here,  _ he’d said, leading Otabek down one of the back hallways to a dim lit room. He hadn’t said sorry, didn’t acknowledge the spat, but hadn’t looked Otabek in the eye as he explained this was to keep him occupied.

Not exactly an apology, no, but close enough.)

\--and then journals for a few minutes, as his therapist prescribed.

(She said it would help, but he’s not so sure. There’s a whole lot of Yuri in there from the last month, frustrations and failings, and how whenever he’s around, Otabek’s gut twists uncomfortably.)

He eats breakfast with Nikolai long before Yuri wakes up, listening to the man’s stories of the past and how much he adores his grandson.

( _ He means well,  _ Nikolai always says,  _ he just has trouble showing it sometimes.) _

After that, it’s a matter of waiting until Yuri gets up, and then it’s off to wherever Lilia’s directed them to that day, whichever interrogation room Yuri’s to be holed up in while he spills the secrets he keeps hidden behind cutting words and well-placed jabs to keep everyone at bay.

Sometimes, though, Otabek catches that guard down, and he grows too fond too quickly of the soft smiles and honeyed words Yuri lets slip when he thinks he’s alone. 

**

Days fly by, Yuri picks at Otabek progressively less, and as the world spins on, Otabek finds himself dwelling less on what he couldn’t do about Aidyn stepping on a mine next to him and more on what Yuri hides inside himself. 

It’s February when Yuri falls ill with a cold. He holes himself up with Potya, Jinx, and what seems like all the blankets in the house, only sticking out his hand to accept the tea and broth Otabek and Nikolai alternate bringing him. Late one night, when the rest of the world is asleep, he knocks on Otabek’s door. 

“Yes?” Otabek asks.

There’s none of the usual snark when Yuri replies, “I can’t stand looking at the walls of my room anymore.”

“Living room’s just down the hall,” Otabek says.

“Yeah,” Yuri says softly. “Yeah, I’m--” He seems about to apologize before thinking better of it and shutting the door behind him, leaving Otabek to wonder exactly his aim was in the first place. 

Yuri Plisetsky hasn’t ever done  _ soft  _ voluntarily around anyone but Nikolai.

Why bother starting tonight?

**

If it’s a ploy to get Otabek off his game, he thinks, then it worked. He spends their days together watching him, yes, but his gaze has taken on a curious edge rather than a cautious one. Biting exchanges take on a gentler tone, turning to quips bandied back and forth over the coffee table as they watch TV together, play with the cats. 

Life gets  _ easier,  _ except for the nights Otabek lies awake with his arms behind his head, staring up at the ceiling and letting guilt about trying to move on wash over him. Yuri’s always a bit more subdued those mornings, as though the dark circles under Otabek’s eyes are a grey cloud hanging over him as well. 

One day, though, he insists on taking his sweet time with Otabek at a restaurant he’d have no hope of ever getting into by himself. By the time they’re back at the house and upstairs, Otabek can no longer hold back the question that’s plagued him ever since the first day. It's dark as he stares into Yuri’s room, the younger man backlit only by the streetlight streaming through the window, and the sight makes him weak. 

While he changes, Otabek stares through the crack in the curtains to the starry sky outside. Maybe his eyes slide over Yuri's pale body. Perhaps he's thinking things he shouldn't. 

Yuri doesn’t need to know.

“Yuri.”

"Hmm?" Yuri barely turns, doesn't bother making eye contact as he falls onto the bed to struggle out of his pants. He's usually so graceful that seeing him like this is nearly comedic, but Otabek doesn't have time to dwell on humor. 

He meets Yuri’s gaze. "Why did you ask for protection?" 

It's a question he shouldn't ask. Maybe it tints his perception, his opinion on his client. But Yuri’s so strong and fierce, so  _ wild,  _ Otabek can't help but wonder why he’s volunteered himself to be put away like this. 

Yuri sighs, shrugs off the rest of his clothes and climbs into bed. "You’ve heard of the Butcher?”

Of course he has. They all have. Someone who offered the police incriminating material extensive enough to warrant over three dozen arrests in four different families, with a considerable amount of their wealth seized alongside. Whoever it was hit Yuri's clan, too, and was ultimately responsible for dragging Yakov Feltsman from his proverbial throne. 

Otabek’s mouth dries, throat clicking as he swallows at the not-quite-admission. "Please tell me you didn't." 

Yuri smirks and pulls up the blankets. "Don't worry. They don't know it was me." 

Of course they don't, or otherwise Yuri would already be dead.  _ Worse _ than dead, likely; there are a lot of things to do to a body before someone dies. Otabek’s seen more than enough of that for his liking. 

"And if they find out?" he asks.

"They won't. I erased my tracks well." 

"Why are you telling me, then?" 

Yuri snickers from under his blankets, as though daring Otabek to follow him down the rabbit hole. "I guess I like you." He peers out, winks, and  _ fuck, _ staying impassive is a feat as Otabek hopes Yuri can’t see the way his face heats. 

"What are you expecting to gain from treason?" 

"What do we do things for, Beka?” Yuri asks, the nickname he’s adopted setting confused butterflies to fluttering in Otabek’s stomach. “Oscar Wilde said  _ 'Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.' _ And I'm not fucking anyone, so…”

Otabek scoffs, tries not to think about Yuri and sex and who he might share that part of himself with. "Hardly. You reduced your own assets, too." 

"When you make it across the board, Otabek, you have to sacrifice a pawn before you get a queen." 

"And you're the queen?" 

"Not yet. But I will be." Yuri moves to kneel halfway down the bed, sat back on his haunches with his hands laid demurely in his lap as he looks at Otabek through heavy-lidded eyes. “Wouldn’t I look lovely in a crown?”

_ No one’s lovely when they’re dead,  _ is what Otabek means to say. He looks at the light dusting Yuri’s naked shoulders, his unbound hair brushing across his chest, and shuts his eyes. “You’re beautiful now,” is what slips into the quiet night. “Don’t let your ambitions tarnish what you have in front of you.”

**

Things change between them after that night. It’s the little things at first; Yuri seeks out Otabek instead of simply existing in the same space, and Otabek doesn’t hold back the occasional lingering touch or look. 

Nikolai takes great delight in teasing both about it when he notices, which is entirely too soon for Otabek’s liking. “It was only a matter of time,” the man chuckles, and when Yuri storms off, he tells Otabek that he’s just happy his Yurochka is happy. “He’s spent too long wrapped up in all that business,” he says, waving an arm pointedly. “He has not grown up to be a happy man.”

“Did any of us?” Otabek asks, offering a half-smile.

Nikolai reaches across the table and when Otabek doesn’t pull his hands away, lays his over Otabek’s. “I see you learning to be,” he says gently. “No matter what happened, you’re becoming more than what you were when we met.”

In the sunlight pooling onto the table, Otabek’s voice shakes as he lets go the story of Aidyn, the war, and the guilt he’s harbored ever since. “He was my best friend,” he whispers, “and I let him down. I can’t let anything happen to you or Yuri. Not like that.”

Nikolai pats his hand. “Our Yura is strong,” he says. “He’s not going anywhere without a fight.”

“He shouldn’t have to fight.” Otabek sighs and hangs his head, pulling his hands back to place them in his lap. “He’s done enough of that already.”

“I’m not so sure that’s your decision,” Nikolai says. He stands and places a warm palm on Otabek’s shoulder, looks down with a smile that rivals the sun’s intensity. In this moment, it’s obvious where Yuri gets that from, too. “Go on,” he says. “Tell him your feelings--you may end up with even more of the happiness you deserve.”

**Author's Note:**

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> 
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